Prometheus or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Accept that Craig was Right. A Picture Essay

So, I was just randomly re-listening to the Prometheus episode. In it I mentioned this particular phenomenon -

- and accused Prometheus of similar. To which, strident booing from Joel. And so - because I am mega-bored - I present a picture essay on the topic. N.B. I've not rewatched Prometheus, so this is just what I can think of off the top of my head. Speaking of which,

THE TOP OF MY HEAD

Prometheus:

Alien3:

LINES AND LINES AND LINES AND LINES

Prometheus:

Alien:

ALL UP IN YOUR GRILL

Prometheus:

Alien:

THAT REALLY SHOULDN'T BE IN THERE

Prometheus:

Alien:

ACID FLASHBACKS

Prometheus:

Alien/s:

(unfortunately, the internet has failed me and I can't find a picture of the scene from Aliens where Hick's armour gets all vinegary)

3 comments:

Thinking about the famously good sequels - Empire Strikes Back, and Godfather Part II. Am I right in thinking that in both cases the continuation of the story was written before the original film (Star Wars: A New Hope, and The Godfather, respectively) was shot?

Joel suggested that there are film franchises that do have better sequels - he mentioned Iron Man III. A great deal of the popular film franchises these days are superheroes from either the DC or Marvel stable, and in both cases the characters all have extensive back stories already - there is always an existing character arc in place. In all these cases the studio, and specifically the writers tasked with making a sequel (or a reboot or a sequel to a reboot) do at least have an existing seam of content and narrative to mine - they are not required to immediately and cynically recycle what was in the previous film.

Whereas if you have an original screenplay, where the characters and story are nowhere other than in the 2 hours of the original film, all the filmmakers are able to do is rehash the previous film and its likely to have diminishing returns.

Something I heard recently on another podcast in the 'four guys sitting around chatting about pop culture' genre was the point that we don't complain when the canon of the THEATRE world is restaged and rehashed. Its not as if we complain that they're 'rebooting' King Lear or some Mamet play or whatever. In fact, part of the fun for avid theatre goers is to discuss the similarities and differences between, David Tenant's Hamlet and Olivier's Hamlet (Gibson's Hamlet vs Branagh's Hamlet if you watched the films). Yet (to use the Overthinking It example) there is no other Indiana Jones other than Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones, and maybe that's a shame. Reboots and reworkings allow us to get it right. With Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield we've seen two actors (and of course, two directors) take on Spidey. Multiple people have had a go at batman, with varying degrees of success. These do-overs is applauded when its theatre, but labelled cynical and lacking imagination when its film.

The thing is - when they do it with THEATRE they're using the same script. With FILM they try to make it feel like something different but it's basically the same - so it ends up feeling a little dishonest. I mean - also Spider-Man is not Hamlet - although if someone made a mash-up of that - then I'd be first in line to watch it :)

Also - the problem with too many sequels is that they feel so bloated because they try to one-up the film that came before by going BIGGER and BIGGER and BIGGER.

This is really good at giving an explanation of why Empire Strikes Back is so good (namely - it goes smaller and more personal): http://www.ew.com/article/2015/05/21/empire-strikes-back-35th-anniversary